We were watching Rings of Power and my wife kept being like “How can Celebrimbor be so stupid? How can he not see the war waging around him? This is so fake. Nobody is this dense.”
I legitimately cannot even. These themes were distilled into fiction 100 years ago, and that is just the version on my TV today. The danger of populism, the deception of the demagogue… It’s all fucking right there… Impossible to ignore. Yet here we are, dealing with the same shit in a different age.
The danger of populism
The wacko conspiracies aren’t due to populism, it’s the opposite.
People understand they have an antagonistic relationship with the government, but they don’t have the theory and historical knowledge to understand the systems at play due to centuries of anti-communist propaganda, so they latch onto conspiracies that match their prejudices and don’t threaten any of their beliefs.
We saw the same thing with nazi germany.
You’ve basically defined populism:
Say whatever rhetoric you believe to be currently popular at this very moment, with absolutely no coherent or consistent policies, within the framework of ‘all us normal people’ vs ‘those degenerate elites.’
This is actually precisely in line with appealing to latent rhetoric and amplifying and creating conspiracies.
Trump did/does this, the Nazis did this.
Basically all populists say whatever the fuck they want and then their actual policies are almost always in line with whatever helps out them and their immediate friends/allies the most. But these can also turn on a dime.
Instability and erratic decision making are the hallmarks of basically every populist leader in the modern era.
Mostly only in the US does the term ‘populist’ have connotations of actually popularly supported policy positions, as mostly only in the US is ‘Libertarian’ a right wing, pro business ideology instead of a left wing, socialist ideology, and mostly only in the US does communism/socialism mean ‘whenever the government spends money on stuff I don’t want it to.’
You are correct though that populism works best in a very stupid, uneducated, angry population.
… Which is why the Republicans actual ‘masterful political strategy’ of the last 30 or 40 years was:
Make everyone stupid and uneducated by destroying public education, and angry via bombastic fear and hate spread via talk radio, tv news, and more lately the internet.
Mostly only in the US does the term ‘populist’ have connotations of actually popularly supported policy positions
That explains it, that’s the only way I’ve seen it used when referring to modern America. NYT opinion columnists like it because it allows them to paint leftwing policy that is popular because it helps everyone and rightwing policy that is popular because most American have unexamined white supremacist beliefs with the same brush.
These themes were distilled into fiction 100 years ago
Just a nitpick: Rings of Power uses Tolkien’s characters but its story is almost entirely the work of the show’s modern script-writers. They don’t have the rights to use anything Tolkien wrote about that period of Middle Earth’s history beyond what is mentioned in LOTR and its appendices (which is very little).
How can Celebrimbor be so stupid? How can he not see the war waging around him? This is so fake. Nobody is this dense.
This is one time where the Simpsons answer is actually appropriate: A wizard did it.
Except the wizard is a Maia.
(note: all wizards are Maia but not all of the Maiar are wizards)
The last time Donald Trump was President of The United States of America, a viral pandemic emerged out of China, he did not stop flights coming in, he did not enact the war powers to manufacture PPE for our first responders, health workers, or public, he eschewed the use of ventilators, and openly mocked those who wore masks.
A Million fucking Americans perished from COVID during his Presidency, the largest per capital, and total of any nation on gods green earth.
What’s happening is not the result of misinformation, it’s informed self immolation.
Republicans realized they cannot win on their arguments, so they wish to burn it all down, themselves and their children included.
Yep. Per the article:
But what feels novel in the aftermath of this month’s hurricanes is how the people doing the lying aren’t even trying to hide the provenance of their bullshit. Similarly, those sharing the lies are happy to admit that they do not care whether what they’re pushing is real or not.
Meanwhile the Cuomo was on the news every night talking about the need to balance human lives with “The Economy” and as soon as democrats were in power, they ended covid measures and testing.
Prioritizing short-term profits over human lives was a bipartisan effort.
Edit: NYC Governor Cuomo, not that he and DeBlasio weren’t competing to show how much they were doing to balance safety and the economy.
Bipartisan. A casual google news search for 2020 shows Cuomo talking about how awful it was that Trump was reopening the economy in May, and how we need to open the economy in April.
But he was also on CNN nearly every night, saying we need to get back to work and reopen as soon as possible, but in a good way, unlike Trump who wants to do the same thing, but in a bad way.
Yeah but at least he was able to send free COVID tests to his Daddy Vlad when supplies were short and Americans were dying.
I’m against the death penalty and I hate these posts that compare to Hitler but hear me out.
Though the US and world death toll in covid wasn’t entirely Trump’s fault, he was a major, if not the largest, contributer to it being that high through his actions and inactions. He lied about it, dismissed it, made it appear to be no-risk, egged his followers on to ridicule, hate, and threaten those that tried to protect themselves and their families.
Millions died. How many of those were needless deaths? How many were thanks directly or indirectly through the actions of orange dipshit clown? I think his death count is (obviously) lower than Hitler’s, but I think it’s in a similar range. I think he thinks about the deaths he caused in. A similar way that Hitler did, those that died were nothing, worthless.
If I murder more than two persons in the US, there is a good chance I get the death penalty. Trump willingly caused the deaths of millions just.tonfuether his political career. Why isn’t he on death row?
I guess the quote “one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic” is real indeed.
I relatively yearn for the days where it was only crazy trump supporters getting covid wrong, as opposed to tons of formerly sensible people joining them in pretending it went poof because we got tired of it, or that it suddenly became not enough of a problem to warrant massive action.
How is there any hope against misinformation when the top comment on a thread decrying misinformation contains major misinformation itself? Specifically, way more Americans have died of COVID under the Biden administration than under the Trump administration.
Just one source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2024/09/18/covid-19-deaths-under-trump-1-million-fact-check/75197222007/
Granted, the Biden administration has had a lot more time under the COVID pandemic than Trump had, but the Biden administration has handled COVID in a very far from ideal way (see all the CDC missteps under Biden, for one example).
Please note: I am not a Trump supporter! I am only interested in truth, reason, and reality. Downvoting my post is a sign that you’re not interested in any of those.
Granted, the Biden administration has had a lot more time under the COVID pandemic than Trump had, but the Biden administration has handled COVID in a very far from ideal way (see all the CDC missteps under Biden, for one example).
Not only did it have more time under it, but it also inherited a public that was much more threatening toward anyone attempting to advance COVID control measures, including common sense ones like masking indoors.
The utter lunacy that polluted the public square during the late 2020 - early 2021 time frame caused a lot of the deaths that happened under Biden’s early days to be in the category of being completely preventable but a large portion of the country had been fed bullshit for a year that told them to resist every possible preventative measure.
A lot of that is fair, except that it wasn’t just Biden’s early days. The mishandling of the COVID pandemic continues to this day. It’s been a clusterfuck from the beginning under Trump to the present under Biden. The US doesn’t seem to be that unique in that regard though. It seems like it’s been a clusterfuck around most of the world.
Do you remember when the media had a fit about Trump being racist for blocking the flights to countries with high covid rates? How about the two weeks after he announced operation warp speed to develop a vaccine and everybody swore up and down that they wouldn’t take Trump’s vaccine? Trump bears a lot of responsibility for the toxic political culture, but it wasn’t just him.
You forgot the part where they were literally given a pandemic playbook and they choose to actively ignore its existence, with some republicans even claiming it didn’t exist.
While riding home with my son this evening, I found myself apologizing to him. This world today–the people–are a profoundly unbelievable mess. He brought up things he’s read in the news and I hardly know what to say. We both understand how insane it all is, but people still believe it… truly…
I get it. The world has always been a mess. This mess today is simply uniquely ours at this time in history.
But…
My gods…
What…
The…
sighs
I’m approaching my sixties now. I’ve been through a lot of the messes of recent history. The world today (and it is the world, its not just the US although that is the most flagrant example) feels genuinely different. Just the sheer amount of misinformed hate and self-destructive uber capitalism feels like its reaching a crescendo. What comes after that is worrying to think about.
I don’t think there’s more disinformation as before in terms of % of info being wrong, but a lot of people have gotten really good at calling it out. The best example on-hand is the “cigarettes are good for you actually” and “we will buy tramways put of every city in North America and tear them out, then sell you a car!”
It’s always been like this.
50 something also chiming in.
I think the nutcases have always just been there. Hiding in plain sight. They just never had a platform. It was always “uncle jerry in the back, spilling nonsense while drinking his beer. Dont mind him.”
And that was the end of it.
Uncle Jerry now has twitter , facebook and all those other bullshit channels for furthering his bullshit. And some of us just eat it up.
I work in IT, which is more then anything else, a business of truths. Its binary. It works or it don’t. 0 or 1. Yes or no. A lot of highly trained and educated people work in IT, which is a field which only exists because of science… and blatantly ignore that same science about society, environment, immigration, economy, chem trails and god knows what else.
It’s baffling. There are a lot, i would say 1 in 10, who will spout the most insane bullshit after a few beers. About stuff “the government doesn’t want you to know.” what exactly is the government ? I work for the government but apparently I’m excluded. Im good government?
we haven’t been on the moon. Chem trails are real. Climate change is just a fad, covid is a way to control us, vaccines give cancer, polio isn’t a real disease, its made up.
Da fuq.
I truly believe that social media, and I mean all social media should be banned. People should not be allowed to spew their bullshit. We as a people are really not ready for this. Maybe China is right with their “social score” system. Maybe stuff like the bilderberg group is really needed. We seem to need guidance. We, the normal civvies, seemingly are too hell bend on watching it all burn. And are too stupid to stop it. People like trump, inciting hate, spraying unlimited bullshit, should be thrown in jail. That’s not politics. That’s rage baiting.
The path we’re on leads to 2 things: the capitalist dystopia, think blade runner and a total melt down of our ecosystem which, ultimately, will lead to our dinosaur moment.
We are living, this moment, in a great filter event. I truly believe that. Wanna know why we don’t see, hear other planet wide civilisations? Look around you. See where this leads. Connect the dots. “do your own research.” ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
I agree, mostly, young people start with tiktok (or whatever the platform du jour is) and the algo pushes Andrew Tate at them. Xitter is now a cesspit of hate. There are FB Groups and Insta accounts monetising ‘news’ and YT accounts pushing hate as ‘news’.
Simplistic populism is easy to digest and easy to understand. No matter how ludicrous it is, the idea that the root of your problems is muslims/the dems/women/trans folks/the gays/whatever is simple, easy to understand and easy to communicate. Its made for algorithm driven content.
I don’t want to be that old cunt at the back of the room harping on about the good old days but we live in an age when truth is irrelevant and easy to understand but utterly wrong information gets spread far and wide. Facts are usually complex, nuanced and not easy to present in a soundbite type way and nobody listens to explanations that last more than 5mins.
People of my generation invented this info hellscape and are profiting from it. The young are the ones paying the price.
We are living, this moment, in a great filter event. I truly believe that. Wanna know why we don’t see, hear other planet wide civilisations? Look around you. See where this leads. Connect the dots. “do your own research.” ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
My favorite people are the evangelical Christians that tacitly understand this point and want to accelerate things.
I truly believe that social media, and I mean all social media should be banned. People should not be allowed to spew their bullshit. We as a people are really not ready for this. Maybe China is right with their “social score” system. Maybe stuff like the bilderberg group is really needed. We seem to need guidance. We, the normal civvies, seemingly are too hell bend on watching it all burn. And are too stupid to stop it. People like trump, inciting hate, spraying unlimited bullshit, should be thrown in jail. That’s not politics. That’s rage baiting.
Haha, that sounds like something I would say. I wonder if it’s an IT guy thing to say “fuck it, this is broken, no more doing this for anyone anymore” " and by the way, how did you even break this?".
But yeah, this is probably an overreach. If you banned all social media, you’d have to ban all forms of Internet mass communication, forums and message boards, comments sections, all the way down to group emails…
Also, practically, you’ll never get any law that limits speech that much passed in the US, is just not going to happen.
I wish I knew what would work to start addressing this problem…
Funny thing about humans is that they only really have their own life’s frame of reference for evaluating their experiences. I wouldn’t necessarily say that the decline of the American empire is unique, I am sure when other empires were experiencing similar levels of decline they had just as much douchebags to contend with. But the threat posed by increasing natural deterioration is a unique factor of our current era. Well that, and the specter of large scale nuclear war. Other than that, the culture wars have always been raging. Honestly, there’s no war but class war. I sound like a broken record now
I believe the framework Warzel is looking for is something like:
‘Mass Delusional Narcissistic Sustained Psychosis at a Societal Level’
Well you see, according to the DSM whatever the latest edition is, a mental condition is ultimately only real and serious and diagnosable if it seriously impacts your or others ability to function in the economy.
Strong religious beliefs? Literally magical thinking and delusional, but nope, generally not a disorder in and of itself.
Brainwashed by a fascist cult leader into conspiratorial delusion generation upon being presented with facts you do not like?
Eh, as long as you don’t directly, obviously, repeatedly threaten to harm others, you can probably still go to work, no problem.
Driven to nervous breakdowns by the stress of work, trauma of poverty, knowledge that capitalism is going to kill billions of people in the coming decades and you as a moral being feel helpless, yet somehow responsible?
Oh sure, you probably qualify for something, here’s some pills that may help you get back to work.
There is no ethical Psychology or Psychiatry under Capitalism either.
